Father allowed to pay child support in pizza, Italian court rules

by
AAL |
31 May 2016

An Italian court has ruled in favour of a divorced father who paid his child support in pizza.

The 50-year-old pizza maker from a small village outside Padua, did his best to pay child support during hard times, providing 400 euros worth of pizzas, calzone and other goods from the pizza place he was managing, the Telegraph UK reported.

“In lieu of money, the defendant offered his ex-wife the same amount of compensation in the form of take-away pizzas from his workplace, an offer promptly rejected as ‘beggar’s change’,” wrote judge Chiara Bitozzi in her ruling.

Nicola Toso and his wife Nicoletta Zuin, divorced in 2002, but in 2008, when the country faced economic crisis, Toso couldn’t make ends meet with his new wife and three children. He offered free food instead of the 400 euros stipulated in the divorce agreement.

Zuin filed a criminal complaint, his defence attorney arguing that he had truly fallen on hard times and had been forced to close his business in 2010 when he was unable to pay vendors and employees. She told the court that he had met all other custody obligations.

He was acquitted from criminal charges for failing to make the payments after Judge Bitozzi found that the couple’s daughter had moved in with her father and his new family in 2011, a court then requiring the mother was now required to pay the father 300 euros a month in child support. Therefore, the judge found no evidence that the father had committed a crime.